re: North or South Louisiana high school football?

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Jefferson Parish has 3 major private schools, Curtis, Rummel, and Shaw. Curtis is obviously the best of that group and arguable the best in the state. Rummel is the top 5A team, and Shaw is having some down years and will continue to struggle the next two years in 5A but has more state championship appearances in the past 25 years than some schools have playoff appearances. Jefferson Parish is also the feeder for the majority of the solid Nola programs. You think the kids from BM, Jes, Karr (yes Karr fudges addresses and takes JP kids), St. Aug, and HC get their athletes from Orleans? No, they give scholarships to JP kids.

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Jefferson Parish has 430,000 people, roughly double north Louisiana. And let's face it: You talk about New Orleans schools that get kids from JP. Well, you better believe Curtis, Rummel, etc. try to get players from New Orleans. Remember that school bus you saw crushed by the barge during the levy breech in Katrina? That was a John Curtis bus used to bus kids from the ninth ward to Curtis. One of those kids, Bush, went to Michigan State and told me the whole story of the bus being crushed.

So really, the JP private schools are drawing from a metro of close to 1.1 million, probably realistically a little less because it's probably a tough sell to get kids from the north shore to c'mon down to Curtis.

So you have five times the population of Northeast Louisiana. You have one, super dominant program playing in 2A that's drawing more than its fair share of top players from the Metro area. The Catholic League teams haven't won a state title since Shaw in 1987. That's 25 years.

Monroe football>Jefferson Parish football. AND IT'S NOTE EVEN CLOSE.

And I ain't even from Monroe. I've just watched this stuff for a long time. Monroe's played the best football in Louisiana for years and nobody else is even close. I thought the river parishes might have caught them back when Hahnville and Destrehan had their run, but those programs have slipped back into the pack.